Prominent venture capitalist Tim Draper told me he is not endorsing any of the candidates running for president. But I strongly suspect that Draper, at a minimum, shares a spirit animal with the presumed Republican nominee, Donald Trump.

The two men possess an instinctive flair for self-promotion and hyperbole, both have started universities named after themselves (Draper University will begin offering a master’s degree program for aspiring entrepreneurs), and both gleefully mock incumbents, whether in government, media or business.

Draper was in fine Trumpesque form during our recent phone interview, most notably when he said he no longer wants his startups to pursue initial public offerings because of what he calls excessive regulation.

Only companies valued at $10 billion or more should pursue a stock offering, he said, a seemingly arbitrary number that eliminates more than 90 percent of the world’s startups worth at least $1 billion. Coincidentally, investors valued one of Draper’s more high-profile investments, Theranos, at $9 billion — just below Draper’s threshold — before the medtech startup became the target of a criminal investigation for allegedly misleading investors.

More on that later.

Like Trump, it’s difficult to separate truth from bluster in Draper’s remarks. For example, I find it hard to believe that any venture capitalist would pass up an opportunity to make lots of money from an IPO. So for Draper to categorically rule them out sounds somewhat disingenuous, especially if the IPO market turns hot again.

However, Draper is correct in that Silicon Valley and Wall Street are barely on speaking terms when it comes to IPOs. Research firm CB Insights is tracking 531 companies on the verge of an IPO. But this year, we have seen only 22 IPOs in the United States, including a measly two tech offerings, according to Renaissance Capital.

To hear Draper tell it, the government has made it too expensive for companies to pull the trigger, forcing IPO-bound startups to blow too much money on paperwork and lawyers. Hence the low number of initial offerings. It’s an argument others have made before.

“We have a huge problem here,” Draper said. “If the government continues to try to protect us from ourselves, then we’re never going to generate wealth. Liquidity is everything. You can have $1 billion worth of Uber stock, but you can’t buy one cup of coffee with it right now.”

But what Draper fails to mention is investor demand. Perhaps companies are not going public because Wall Street is not willing to pay the sky-high valuations that investors like Draper assign to these startups. For a venture capitalist, it would be pretty embarrassing to say that Company A is worth $5 billion, only to see Wall Street value it at $2 billion. Heck, I too would try to stay private for as long as I can.

Which brings us back to Theranos. Draper Fisher Jurvetson was among the first group of investors to back the medical device startup, founded by superstar entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes. Theranos promised to shake up the health care industry with a revolutionary technology that can diagnose a host of diseases with just a few drops of blood.

Not surprisingly, Draper is unrepentant about Theranos’ prospects. Just like Uber and taxis and Napster and the music business, he said, competitors in the health care business are targeting Theranos because it threatens their dominance.

“There are a group of monopolists that are making a lot of money,” Draper said. “When a company breaks through a big industry, they are doing everything in their power to take that company down.”

Draper even suggested that sexism is driving the vitriol against Theranos.

Thomas Lee is a business columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. He is the author of “Rebuilding Empires,” (Palgrave Macmillan/St. Martin’s Press), a book about the future of big box retail in the digital age. Lee has previously written for the Star Tribune (Minneapolis), St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Seattle Times and China Daily USA. He also served as bureau chief for two Internet news startups: MedCityNews.com and Xconomy.com.